Bibcode
Fender, R. P.; Gallo, E.; Russell, D. M.
Bibliographical reference
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 431, Issue 1, p.405-414
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5
2013
Citations
88
Refereed citations
74
Description
We revisit the paradigm of the dependence of jet power on black hole
(BH) spin in accreting BH systems. In a previous paper, we showed that
the luminosity of compact jets continuously launched due to accretion on
to BHs in X-ray binaries (analogous to those that dominate the kinetic
feedback from active galactic nuclei) does not appear to correlate with
reported BH spin measurements. It is therefore unclear whether
extraction of the BH spin energy is the main driver powering compact
jets from accreting BHs. Occasionally, BH X-ray binaries produce
discrete, transient (ballistic) jets for a brief time over accretion
state changes. Here, we quantify the dependence of the power of these
transient jets (adopting two methods to infer the jet power) on BH spin,
making use of all the available data in the current literature, which
include 12 BHs with both measured spin parameters and radio flares over
the state transition. In several sources, regular, well-sampled radio
monitoring has shown that the peak radio flux differs dramatically
depending on the outburst (up to a factor of 1000), whereas the total
power required to energize the flare may only differ by a factor of
≲4 between outbursts. The peak flux is determined by the total
energy in the flare and the time over which it is radiated (which can
vary considerably between outbursts). Using a Bayesian fitting routine,
we rule out a statistically significant positive correlation between
transient jet power measured using these methods and current estimates
of BH spin. Even when selecting sub-samples of the data that disregard
some methods of BH spin measurement or jet power measurement, no
correlation is found in all cases.
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Black holes, neutron stars, white dwarfs and their local environment
Accreting black-holes and neutron stars in X-ray binaries provide an ideal laboratory for exploring the physics of compact objects, yielding not only confirmation of the existence of stellar mass black holes via dynamical mass measurements, but also the best opportunity for probing high-gravity environments and the physics of accretion; the most
Montserrat
Armas Padilla